1. Field of the Invention
The field of the present invention relates to electronic commerce and, more particularly, to systems and methods for dynamic construction of a web page via electronic links over a global electronic network, such as the Internet.
2. Background
The global computer network generally known as the Internet has revolutionized the process of purchasing consumer products by allowing individuals to access virtually limitless amounts of information and a vast number of retailers in order to locate and purchase a desired product. The transaction of business over the Internet has become commonly known as electronic commerce, or xe2x80x9ce-commerce.xe2x80x9d Through the use of personal computers running web browser programs which access the Internet via telephone modems or other network communication means, consumers are able to access literally thousands of different World Wide Web sites hosted by retailers selling every consumer product imaginable.
An integral part of e-commerce today involves operators of retail sales web sites (often referred to as merchants) compensating other web site hosts (commonly referred to as affiliates) to provide advertising banners, images, and links to the merchants"" web sites in order to increase exposure of the merchant sites and the goods and services offered there. Affiliates are compensated for their support in a variety of ways, including what have come to be known as xe2x80x9cpay per sale,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cpay per click through,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cpay per lead,xe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cpay per viewxe2x80x9d arrangements, depending on the nature of interaction with the user. Each of these arrangements bases the ultimate compensation on the number of users that view the merchant""s ad or material on the affiliate web site, or else that xe2x80x9cclick throughxe2x80x9d a link contained in the merchant""s ad or material, or in other similar ways.
From a merchant perspective, advertising on and having links from affiliate web sites is advantageous in that it increases exposure of the merchant""s web site and thereby is likely to increase sales of goods and services being offered by the merchant. From an affiliate perspective, the ability to earn income by advertising, links, and sales support for various merchants on the affiliate web site can make operating the affiliate web site more lucrative.
The standard method of generating advertising banners, images, and links on affiliate web pages is to embed such content into the affiliate""s web page. Web pages generally comprise source code in various forms, such as HTML code, JavaScript, Java, Flash, XML, DHTML, to name a few. The web page content generally contains all of the information necessary for the next rendering or display by a viewer""s web browser, and may contain a static embedded link that identifies the particular merchant web page to be accessed.
Central linking web sites have been developed which allow merchants and affiliates to become registered members in order to centralize the accounting needed to compensate affiliates for click-throughs, banner advertisements, and sales resulting from the display of merchant advertising or links on the affiliate web sites. Information such as affiliate identifiers, merchant identifiers, and the actual merchant web site universal resource locators (URLs) themselves, are statically embedded into affiliate web pages. When a user visits an affiliate web site, the user""s web browser receives the affiliate web page with the embedded static links. When the user activates a link (for example, by clicking on it), the user""s web browser is directed first to the central linking web site, and then, based upon the merchant""s URL embedded in the web page link, re-directed to the merchant web site. During this process, the central linking web site performs various accounting functions for both affiliates and merchants. For example, the web site system may credit affiliates for displaying merchant ads, and/or if the user clicks through to or purchases from the corresponding merchant web site. The merchant""s account is simultaneously debited to reflect the payment made to the affiliate. All accounting information is stored on an accounting database that is part of the central linking system.
A central linking web site system as described above is advantageous in that it greatly simplifies and centralizes accounting for both merchants and affiliates. Compensation amounts to affiliates and debit amounts from merchants can be aggregated, with a single payment made to each affiliate and a single debit taken from the merchant on a regular basis. This relieves affiliates and merchants of the time consuming task of performing such accounting functions themselves.
In one aspect of today""s e-commerce, merchants are desirous of having affiliates link to goods and services sold by merchant web sites, so as to increase the volume of such sales. In essence, such links are a form of advertising. Affiliates are paid for this advertising by a variety of ways, usually involving tracking of traffic from the affiliate""s web site to the merchant""s web site. Because affiliate revenue is often tied to such tracking, and merchant revenue benefits from such traffic, both the affiliate and the merchant have a vested interest in seeing that such links are placed on affiliate web pages where they will increase traffic to merchant web sites.
However, not all affiliate web sites maximize their ability to obtain revenue from links to merchant sites. Potential links are often ignored, for a variety of reasons. For example, the affiliate might not recognize a potential revenue link opportunity. In addition, even if a potential revenue link opportunity is recognized, the affiliate might not optimize its placement, or even optimize the number of links within a web page or web site. Furthermore, the affiliate might lack the time, know-how or willingness to create revenue links, even if the opportunity for such links is fully recognized.
Like advertising in media other than the Internet, some advertising on the Internet, and some merchant links on the Internet, are more effective than others. Effectiveness can be influenced by a host of factors, such as location, variety, placement, targeted audience and association with non-advertising content, to name just a few. Moreover, what works at one point of time may not work at another point in time, and vice versa.
To allow some level of versatility in web page advertisements, techniques have been developed by which a portion of the web page is reserved for advertising that is selected on the fly when a visiting user accesses the web page. Typically, remote ad serving systems operate by reserving an area of the web page for a graphic-based advertisement. At a remote, third party site, advertising servers dynamically determine what gets shown in the designated area of the web page, and serve selected ads into the designated area. In these systems, both the image of the ad as well as the destination of the ad are served from the same remote, third party advertising server. These types of systems have the advantage of allowing a remote server to control what gets shown in a web page, and of allowing web page owners to control what types of ads get shown in a web page without having to change any source code in the web page for different ads. However, these systems are not very flexible, in that they generally do not allow the web page owner to decide to have different types (e.g., image, text, streaming audio, etc.) of ads being served from a web page, without having to change the underlying source code in the web page.
Another conventional technique for allowing remote management of content in a web page is known as hosted ad serving. According to such a technique, the web page owner places software tags in a web page. Upon reading the web page file from a disk or memory, the web server reads the software tag and replaces it with the source code (usually HTML code) stored in an ad database. In this way, the web page owner can have different types of ads served from the same web page. The user""s web browser receives a unified web page with the embedded content having replaced the tag. However, a drawback of hosted ad serving is that it requires an ad server installation on the web server serving the web page. In other words, the content owner is required to provide the ad server functionality on-site for replacing tags with source code stored in the ad database.
Some content providers serve content into predefined image areas of a web page by serving the image from the content provider""s web server, and redirecting the user to content selected (e.g., clicked on) by the user. This technique is similar to the remote advertising server, but pertains to regular content and not just banner advertisements. A similar technique has been implemented in Java(copyright), in the form of news scrollers served from a central location. However, these techniques for providing content suffer from the same drawbacks as those for serving ads remotely, in that they are not very flexible and do not allow the web page owner the choice of having different types of content being served from the web page, without having to change the underlying source code of the web page.
Accordingly, a technique that can permit remote management of content on a designated portion of a web page in a flexible and dynamic manner, would represent a significant advance in the state of the art of content provision via the Internet, or any other network of computers. Likewise, a technique that can increase the effectiveness of advertising on the Internet, and especially a method that permits such effectiveness to increase dynamically and flexibly, would also represent a significant advance in the state of the art of advertising via the Internet, or any other network of computers.
The present invention is generally directed, in one aspect, to methods and systems for inserting dynamic or variable type content from a web server into a designated portion of a web page over a distributed electronic network, such as the Internet.
In one embodiment, a remote content management system and method are provided whereby a web page owner defines one or more areas or zones of a web page as remotely managed, and then connects to a central server to manage those areas or zones. Preferably, a variety of different types of content may be placed into the pre-designated web page areas or zones, including, for example, image-based content, regular hyper-linked text, embedded Java(copyright) applets (or other platform-independent interpretable source code), flash files, audio files, and the like.
In one or more embodiments as disclosed herein, insertion of dynamic or variable type content from a web server into a designated portion of a web page is accomplished using a dynamic content code and a dynamic content host server code that has been embedded into the web page. The embedded dynamic content host server code causes a user""s web browser to access the predetermined web server, and the dynamic content code indicates the content to be included in the web page. In certain embodiments, the dynamic content code may include such things as a program file name and an identification code.
In another separate aspect, a designated portion of the web page in which dynamic content is to be inserted may be defined by at least one content display attribute that is accessed based upon the dynamic content host server code embedded in the web page. The designated portion of the web page may encompass a portion of the web page, or the entire web page, and a web page may contain two or more designated portions in which dynamic content is inserted, each designated portion having a dynamic content code.
In another separate aspect, dynamic content is controlled by at least one content display attribute that is accessed based upon a dynamic content host server code. The dynamic content can be varied according to a content modification level or include a static content and a run-time modified content. The dynamic content code can include a program file name and an identification code, and the dynamic content can be varied according to a content modification level associated with the identification code, in which case the dynamic content can be static or include a run-time modified content.
In still another separate aspect, a web page with dynamic content can be generated in response to a request from a client computer to a host computer over a computer network to access the web page. After the request is sent, a dynamic content server computer is accessed based upon a dynamic content code embedded within the web page. A program file is run based upon the dynamic content code to generate the dynamic content, which is then inserted into the web page and displayed on the client computer. The program file can be selected based upon a program file name contained within the dynamic content code. The program file can use an identification code included in the dynamic content code to generate the dynamic content. This can be done by use of a plurality of content display attributes associated with the dynamic content, which may contain a content attribute and a display attribute. The program file may vary the dynamic content according to at least one content modification level. The dynamic content can include a static content and a run-time modified content.
In a further separate aspect, the dynamic content code is generated in association with a remote page created by a user on a dynamic content host computer. The remote web page has a plurality of content display attributes that define its look and behavior. The plurality of content display attributes can be automatically defined after the user selects an automatic definition option or the user can permit the dynamic host computer to modify at least one of the plurality of content display attributes based upon a pre-selected criterion. The user can define a content level within the remote web page that limits how a specified portion of the remote page can be modified, and this content level can be defined to permit automatic modification based upon a pre-selected criterion. A dynamic content server computer, which can be the same as the dynamic content host computer, is updated with the remote web page.
In yet additional, separate aspect of the present inventions, the dynamic content code can be embedded in additional web pages and can include a potential revenue link.
Further embodiments, variations, enhancements and modifications are also disclosed herein.